Some linger at the cafe for only an hour or so, a ritual that has become as fundamental to their day as brushing their teeth. But random visits to a score of cafes in the Bay Area confirm suspicions: A whole bunch of people are spending entire mornings or afternoons, even entire days, ensconced in the cafe.

Long a tradition in Europe, and in bohemian and intellectual circles in the States, the cafe in recent years has become the dominion of Everyman.

Bikers, executives, artists, retirees, geeks, you name it. All seem drawn by the cafe's aura of civility and sophistication - not to mention its trendiness.

In many neighborhoods, the cafe has replaced the corner pub as the gathering place and hangout. But the cafe today is the preferred destination, too, for folks who would have otherwise headed to the library, a park bench - even the office.

"It's so European," said Tracy Fern, 37, a salon owner who is part of a coffee klatch of nursing mothers who have nicknamed themselves "Spin Mothers" in honor of their twice weekly rendezvous at Spinelli's in Mill Valley.

"We get our decafs and sit and talk, get away from the phones, away from the burp and spit-up crowd. It makes me feel like I have a bit of sophistication . . .

"It's a great meeting place," Fern added. "People did the bar and gym thing. Now, it's definitely the cafe scene."

Changing times - including demographics, lifestyles and work habits - have spurred the cafe's popularity.

Flexible shifts, work-at-home deals, an increasing number of entrepreneurs and freelance consultants, longer lives, early retirement and greater affluence, thanks to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, all make it possible for folks to spend workday hours at the cafe - rather than do the 9-to-5 grind.

Even folks who order their coffee to take out often find themselves sidling up to a table. Before they know it, they're hooked.

The regulars at Simple Pleasures on Balboa Street in the Richmond District are such a fixture that a frequent group picture has become a tradition, said Emily Powers, who works the counter.

"A lot of people know everybody here," said Powers, who added that 75 percent of the business was from customers who came several times a week. "It's like a family thing."

Merchants have responded to the insatiable thirst for cafes by opening up a zillion of them.

Cafes have become so numerous and faddish in some neighborhoods that they're practically a cliche.

Now every mall and shopping strip sells gourmet coffee, prompting some cachet-seekers to check out the budding tea scene.

On three blocks of Fillmore Street alone, between Pine and Clay, there are six cafes and a tea house. There are so many cafes, juice bars and other eateries in Noe Valley that the Board of Supervisors recently approved an 18-month moratorium on new ones.

Although the giant chains, like Starbucks, have their fans, regulars tend to prefer the independent cafe, with its unique character.

The cafe of today is not to be confused with the lowly coffee shop, or the smoke-filled dens of the '50s that were the hangouts of the Beat Generation.

The modern cafe often has sponge-painted walls, gourmet pastries, upholstered seats and piped-in classical music or jazz.

The ambience is the draw. Which is not to say that all cafe dwellers are mere loungers. Many claim - with a straight face - that they do their best work there.

"It's a way of going out and yet working," said Sepideh Farsi, 33, a filmmaker writing a screenplay on her Macintosh laptop while sitting outdoors at The Depot, a popular hangout in Mill Valley's town square. "I don't like libraries - they're too quiet for me. At home alone is too lonely. I like a bit of noise around me."

Some cafes, nicknamed cybercafes, even have electrical outlets for laptop users. At The Grove, on Chestnut Street in the Marina, so many laptop users had taken to settling in for a full day at work that a sign was recently posted limiting table-sitting to 90 minutes.

Which is not to say that cafes are all work and no play. On any given cafe on any given workday, the cafe is a curious mix of people socializing and people who want to be left alone.

"I never really liked bars, but I like to be around people. In bars, guys think you want to be picked up," said Wendy Newman, who was in business management 22 years and is now between jobs. "In a cafe, I can be by myself but still have company."

Newman spends several afternoons a week at Martha & Bros. on 24th Street in Noe Valley. She studies French at a table in preparation for an upcoming trip to France. And she waits for the arrival of The Crew: about a dozen regulars who met at the cafe, nicknamed The Bench because of the outdoor bench where they met.

"This is a place to live, to share heartaches as well as happiness," said Newman. "It's a network, a community."

"In San Francisco, a lot of people come from a lot of different places, and they don't have family," she added. "In many ways, we're family."

If the cafe is a place for strangers to meet and become friends, it is also a place to renew and sustain friendships.

The pull of family and jobs made them go their separate ways. A few years ago, they ran into each other. Ever since, they meet each day at 1 p.m. at the Coffee Roastery on Chestnut Street in the Marina for some reminiscing and jovial teasing.

"You see your friends, you say hello," said Puccinelli.

It is also, he said with a wink, "where we can watch the girls. It's oooo and aaaah and where you been?"

Business meetings are also held at cafes. Brenda Cummings, 35, who runs a nonprofit health referral service, takes prospective employees to Nidal's on Mission Street to hold interviews. And when she gets together with officials of other nonprofits, she heads over to the East Bay, to Mocha Lisa, on the cusp of Berkeley and and the Rockridge section of Oakland where they all live.

Like many, Cummings finds the ambience of the cafe preferable to the stresses and interruptions of the office.

Artists who don't have money for a studio, and whose apartments are too cramped or dark for working, also come to the cafes.

Lance Stephens, a graphic artist in his 40s who rents a room in a Bernal Heights house from a sickly elderly woman, finds it too depressing to work at home. So he walks over to Progressive Grounds on Cortland Avenue as soon as the lunch crowd disappears.

He goes into the back room, finds a table by the patio doors, and sketches until the after-work crowd comes storming in.

"It's like an office that I'm renting a part of the day," said Stephens.

And the rent is cheap. He usually just orders a cup of coffee.

He is able to tune out the distractions of other people, but also welcomes their presence.

"It's my people injection for the day," he said. "But I can also have my privacy. Everybody leaves everybody else alone."

The presence of people is inspiring for other artists. At Royal Ground Coffee on upper Fillmore Street, Herbert Messerschmedt, 34, spends hours each day watching passers-by go by the window. A face, a movement, a shadow will capture his imagination, and he'll spend the rest of the day sketching.

Jacques Lasseau, 46, was so intrigued by the regulars at the North Beach cafes, some of the oldest in The City, that he sketched their portraits. Soon, he had enough for a book, which he has titled "The Casuals."

These days, Lasseau and his girlfriend, Nina Shilling, 52, hang out at Caffe Strada in Berkeley, across from the university. There, under the trees, students spend hours studying, and Lasseau and his girlfriend nuzzle and hold hands.

The couple also work at the cafe on Transforming Desire, their quarterly magazine of erotica. Shilling, a writer and nude performance artist, used to walk up Bancroft Way to the cafe naked, and sit among the students with only a shawl on the concrete bench to keep her warm.

Berkeley no longer allows public nudity, so Shilling must limit her cafe pleasures to her steamy writing. But the cafe, with its mix of interesting people and buzz of energy, still draws her.

And then there is the best reason of all to go to the cafe: to drink coffee.

"Sure, you get a lot of interesting ideas here - physics, consciousness studies. And there a lot of contacts to be made here," said Gaya Jenkins, 40, a poet and former concierge who is a regular at Caffe North Beach, which harkens back to the Beat Generation and still attracts writers.

But the coffee is the key.

"People come in here, exchange ideas, get wired on coffee, and things happen," she said. "Coffee loosens you to a different level so you can write more. You think more . . .